Eberhard nodded assent. Gunther sat down by the bed and read: "May this serve to enlighten me on the day and in the hour when my mind becomes obscured. "I have been much given to introspection. I have endeavored to study myself, without regard to the outward conditions of time, standpoint, or circumstance. I perceive it, but, as yet, I cannot grasp it. It is a dew-drop shut up in the heart of a rock. "There are moments when I am fully up to the ideal I have formed for myself, but there are many more when I am merely the caricature of my better self. How am I to form a conception of my actual self? What am I? "I perceive that I am a something belonging to the universe and to eternity. "During the blessed moments, sometimes drawn out into hours, in which I realize this conception, there is naught but life for me--no such thing as death, either for me or the world. "In my dying hour, I should like to be as clearly conscious as I now am that I am in God, and that God is in me. "Religion may claim warmth of feeling and glory of imagination as her portion. We, on the other hand, have attained to that clear vision which includes both feeling and imagination. "In troubled, restless days, when I endeavored to grasp the Infinite, I felt as if melting away, vanishing, disappearing. I longed to know: What is God? "And now I possess our master's answer: Although we cannot picture God to ourselves, yet we have a clear idea or conception of Him. "For us, the old commandment: 'Thou shalt not make unto thyself any image of God,' signifies _thou canst_ not make to thyself any image of God. Every image is finite; the idea of God is that of infinity. "Spinoza teaches that we must regard ourselves as a part of God-- "While endeavoring to grasp the idea of the whole, I came to understand what is meant by the words: 'The human mind is part of the divine mind.' "A single drop rises on the surface of the stormy ocean of life. It lasts but a second--though men term it threescore years and ten--and then, glowing with the light it receives and imparts, sinks again. "Man, regarded as an individual, is both by birth and education a thought entering upon the threshold of the consciousness of God. At death, he simply sinks below that threshold, but he does not perish. He remains a part of eternity, just as all thought endures in its consequences. "When I combine a number of such individuals or thoughts and term them a nation, the genius of that nation enters upon the threshold of such consciousness as soon as the nation begins to have a history of its own. "Combining the nations into a whole, we have mankind or the totality of thought, the consciousness of God and of the world. "I have often felt giddy at the mere thought of standing firm and secure, on the highest pinnacle of thought. "May these thoughts inspire and deliver me in the hour of dissolution. There is no separation of mortal and immortal life, they flow into each other and are one.